A HAUNTING I CAN’T GET RID OF - BUT WOULD KING OF LIKE TO
I’ve been writing about the paranormal in the Muskoka district of Ontario, since the early 1980's, during the period I was editor of The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge. Members of the writing staff always like to have three or four meaty features "in the bag" (composed and ready to use) just in case the ad reps made some last minutes sales, and the pages of the weekly edition were bumped up. Even four more pages could swallow all our reserve copy. I was never very good writing under the gun, especially with a production manager breathing down my neck..... so I was a big believer in banking editorial copy just in case.
I used to delve through the archives downstairs to find story ideas, and there were always lots of out of print Muskoka books to tap into for history-based features. So from my first years in the local news business, when having a lot of surplus copy available made your stock rise, I kept about a half dozen lengthy pieces on-tap. Many of these explored Muskoka mysteries and legends, and did delve five or six times a year on a paranormal event past or present. With the help of an expert photographer, Harold Wright, one of the finest artists I’d ever been professionally associated, we offered Herald-Gazette readers a full page collection of photographs and feature articles regarding local haunts. I think it was about 1981 if memory serves. Harold was able to do a time exposure of a little girl walking across a room, behind a table, and it was a dynamite image to catch readers’ attention. Of all the published work regarding the paranormal here in Muskoka, this feature earned me the most response. More than a few thought I was nuts to attach my name to the "belief in ghosts" thing, yet I never once confessed, at least in the early going, to actually believing in ghosts. It’s one thing to have a sighting and to relay this message but another thing to adamantly confess to "Yes....I do believe in ghosts for sure, for sure!"
Over the years I’ve talked to many people who have had substantial encounters yet they have made it clear....."I don’t believe in such things." Odd? Not really when you think about the stigma associated then (1980's when I began my research) and even now to being one who openly believes in ghosts and their kind.......it’s to be expected someone at home or work will use "nutter" and your name in the same sentence. My wife and I both find that younger folks today are more interested in the paranormal, and as a teacher she is often asked to reflect on ghosts and such......after of course students have read about her encounters with the other side published nationally in Barbara Smith’s book on Canadian Ghosts. The book became available here in the local grocery store and that’s where young staffers were getting hold of the story, and identifying their Mrs.Currie as the story teller. Hers was the recollection of Herbie the ghost-child of Golden Beach Road. Suzanne doesn’t really like to re-tell the story, because she was troubled by it for many years. I found it more fascinating than disturbing but I understand her reluctance to delve into it all again.
I’ve never worried about it frankly because some very significant scholars and researchers, and well versed individuals over hundreds of years have attached their names to widelyl known sightings and experiences. I have many antique and out of print books telling of these amazing ghostly interventions misting forth from castle towers to haunted rectories and chapels. There are thousands of tales of haunted hotels and mansions, ghost-dwelling gardens and forests, spiritually inhabited cemeteries, opera houses, theaters, industrial buildings and the halls of universities and museums. To worry that an individual in my ballywick thinks I’m odd for confessing a relationship with numerous spirited entities doesn’t phase me one bit. As for those who don’t believe in ghosts but have made their sightings known regardless, well, that’s just the kind of information about the paranormal I seek out most aggressively. From a purity level, when I find someone who accidentally came upon a spirit in passage, a ghost standing in a hall, beside a bed, or on the stairs of an old house, and then disregards it as anything particularly serious.....I want to hear as much as possible because it will usually be void of emotion and embellishment.....because afterall, they don’t believe in ghosts; or so they say! They’re going to give me the straight goods without any reason to elaborate or inflate the story.
As I have lived and worked in many locations that were considered "haunted" by something or other, I do suffer from an "amalgamation" syndrome, I believe, and it tends to manifest in reaction at least once a month in a most peculiar way. While I don’t spend every day writing about ghosts, or researching the paranormal, I do spend a lot of time thinking about the many roads and curious places I’ve visited in my life.....call it a foible of the historian/author who finds pleasure in the days of yore more stimulating than the relative commonplace of modern times. The problem I have created in part, is that of pulling composites of these places and circumstances together without really appreciating the snap-back human nature I was tickling. In other words I have arrived, I believe, at a subconscious reckoning of all places....an emotionally contracted, yet awkwardly put together Frankenstein model of all the curious, haunted places I have visited thus far in 53 years. So according to my dreams in analysis, I have defined a location, a nicely contoured and garden-rich property, a Victorian era building which is usually a house, with interior features that are borrowed and spliced into the dreamscape reminiscent of about ten old houses I’ve known intimately. For example, I will dream about a building that for all intents and purposes appears to be the former McGibbon House on Manitoba Street, in Bracebridge, Woodchester Villa (Bracebridge), a family cottage on the shore of Lake Rosseau near Windermere, houses on Ontario Street, Golden Beach Road, Quebec Street and another location on Dominion Street. When set in one of my repeating nightmares, the property is always roughly the same.....there are sprawling lawns and beautiful gardens and the aura is late Victorian. But it isn’t one identifiable property that would let me say...."ah, yes, it is the McGibbon house or Woodchester Villa. It’s all a composite but the grounds are the combination of only several properties unlike my collage impressions of the haunted house, which is composed of numerous architectural details, of many houses and buildings I have been associated over the decades, here in central Muskoka. And although I can honestly claim to be unafraid of paranormal situations and encounters, at least so far in this mortal coil, I do acknowledge that these particular nightmares are in full terrorizing regalia. But there are other common aspects to the events. There is never any conclusion, which is pretty normal as nightmares range, and I’m always the aggressor, trying to rid the building of an attic-dwelling entity that is both unpleasant and dangerous. And I’ve always got this itch to piss the entity off, and I’m no sooner in the house than I’m starting the battle for willpower supremecy. I begin with a pretty good crowd of other folks at the beginning of the dream but finish with nary a soul anywhere near. I have that affect on people in real life.
The nightmares don’t relate necessarily to any research or writing jag I’ve been occupied with at the time, and although I might have had weeks of work to feed the dream-void, I have never been able to link my day-job in this case, to a seeded paranormal-themed dream-state. I can’t recall one of these nightmares that came after writing about the paranormal yet in the memory bank I suppose it’s logical to assume the perceptions and information within, can by the brain’s mischief, be utilized during the period of greatest requirement.....the construction of a really good nightmare to scare the crap out of the unsuspecting sleeper....ME!
The nightmares began about a decade ago and have repeated many, many times since with only small variations. I have no idea what precise involvement seeded and nurtured the repeating theme of the nightmares, and there hasn’t been anything particularly earth shattering in that decade to blame for these oft repeating and unsettling visitations. I will wake up in fear that the end is near......as anyone startles back to recognition they’ve just then been part of a full-fledged incident of night-time terror. I’m anxious, sweating, actively seeking an explanation in mind and by scanning my physical surroundings, with some trepidation whether it was an encounter of a dream state or it was as real as my racing heart beat.
They all start the same. There will be a lead-up scenario that will not resemble anything more than a run-of-the-mill visitation, meeting of friends and associates, in a mundane, non-exciting environs most of which is pretty much an insignificant backdrop. Within a few interesting scenes no better or worse than a made for television movie, I will somehow encounter "The Building." It is most often a house but not always. It is however, always three stories, four including the Attic which is also a constant in these nightmares. As an example, the foyer and initial identifying features usually appear antiquated and cluttered, with large Victorian parlor chairs and massive sideboards, similar to what I used to deal with as museum manager at Woodchester Villa (Bracebridge) every working day. In the dream state there is an oppressive feeling I sense just stepping into this hallway which always has association with an old and steep wooden staircase. There are rooms to the right and left of the staircase but once the decision is made, in the dream haze to climb up toward the attic, there is only one room having importance and that is at the top of the stairs....that attic .....where a particularly nasty and quite invisible entity is holed-up. I have just experienced a huge shiver just thinking about the fear opening that attic door and looking into the dimly illuminated room, expecting the full wrath to bellow forth from that unhappy, rather nebulously appointed beast within.
For whatever reason my mind places me as the conqueror of all evil spirit-kind, which I don’t understand, I do not enter any of the composite buildings of which I have spoken, without full knowledge I’m about to antagonize the wee beastie upstairs. What makes this quite strange on top of all the other weirdness I’m about to relate, is that I do not at any point have a plan to physically oust the paranormal quality and quantity from the attic should I prevail. I will however, attempt to beat the crap of it with my mind. If I win, well, this just simply doesn’t come up in the run of the nightmare, so I really never have any thought of how the entity will be finally cleansed from the house....or just left as an ugly clump of paranormal in the corner of the attic. Before the first step up, and with several folks around me, some I know and others I don’t care to know, I begin concentrating on what I know will anger the lodger most. I start taunting it with a mental push and shove that will eventually become a storm of mind on mind fisticuffs. At first I’m really just toying with the entity to see if I can get a response, which sometimes results in a cold, gusting and loud retaliation that gets my attention.......and the message sent that it’s going to be a long and nasty battle of willpowers.
The closer I get to the upper section of staircase, the more intense my ambition to obliterate the unkown but powerful attic dweller. And as I intensify my focus on what lurks behind the door, the creature roars like nothing I’ve ever experienced or heard.....at least beyond this dream state. It is terrifying yet I can’t stop challenging it until I finally crash through the attic door, confronting the enemy like Hollywood’s "Shane," pounding his way to justice at the expense of every thug in the bar-room. And when I get a glimpse of the spirited force I’m planning to reckon with, it is like the image of the all and powerful Wizard of Oz, and instead of charging ahead....well, I’m staggered by the (always in color) spiritual spectacle. It is amazing to see this manifestation rising from a back wall into a most ominous and unclenching force, as if I was at the ground zero of an F-5 tornado. The point is that I only reach this pinnacle of confrontation, in the attic, once out of every for or five nightmares of this same composition and character. I usually don’t get all the way up the stairs before I awaken in a bath of sweat.
There are a variety of other scenarios that take place around the subject property....stories within stories you might say. It will be well removed from anything spooky at all and then for some unexplained reason the whole mood of the situation will evolve from a pleasant, non-threatening dream to the confrontational "Please excuse me....I have an attic to clean out," emotional roller-coaster. One minute I’m wandering through a beautiful Victorian inspired garden, actually enjoying the scent of many wonderful flowers, and then the next reality is that I’ve entered the house and spotted the staircase where evil apparently always lurks.
As a partial explanation I did have a number of events at Woodchester Villa that did place stairs as the divide between safe passage and the unexpected. In the early years of museum operation, particularly the period of the early to late 1980's, we suffered many false alarms due to the gnawing activity of squirrels in the attic area of the restored octagonal museum building, otherwise known as the "Bird House." There are other stories in this blog collection related to my days at the museum. Well, apparently, the coating on the wiring had a licorice-like taste and it greatly appealed to the critters on cold winter nights when there was nothing else to consume. We would get a call from the alarm monitoring company and meet up with an officer from the Ontario Provincial Police to search the buildings for a potential intruder. There were many late night trips over to Woodchester where we would have to conduct a room by room search, up to the attic, hoping quite frankly to find the house unoccupied. It wasn’t until the alarm wiring was changed that the squirrels stopped their dining habits. So I had more than a few tense moments with officers searching Woodchester, and going up the stairs quietly always seemed so much more dangerous and threatening than searching rooms on the level. I was always looking behind me as if to expecting the intruder to attack from behind as it was where we were most vulnerable. I have had many other staircase incidents in old houses, one actually that involved a paranormal event (documented in this blog series - see McGibbon House), so I can see how this staircase fixation may have been seeded decades ago as being somewhat precarious....no matter what the building.
So there I am "mind-fighting" this paranormal entity which is bigger and more determined than me, and the wind is howling, hair and fur flying, and the ghostly-mortal combat at its peak, and bloody hell......I wake up having done nothing more than earned yet another stalemate in the life and death struggle for attic supremacy. Crazy or what? It will take me about a half hour to settle down after I awaken but once I do slumber again, there is no chance I will revisit the attic in question for a re-match until many weeks and months later.
I think what is so unnerving about the nightmare, is that I truly believe I have the power to battle evil by thought process and rigorous contemplation.....concentration focused like a laser beam on the enemy. Maybe as a writer, and a long time editorialist for the local press, I started to believe my arguments were on the cutting edge of truthfulness, that could penetrate even the hardest shell of my adversaries. Possibly. Yet when I start each quest to oust the rogue entity, I know in advance that at best I’m only going to stir up complacency.....letting the alleged attic beast know I’m a die-hard trouble-maker....which is pretty much my reputation as a regional writer/historian. I usually have to stir the pot awhile before I hear the first sabres rattling above, and long before I get to the attic region of the building, the howling wind and roar of anger hits me on the bottom stairs and continues the bluster all the way to the top. I very seldom catch the creature off guard. It has happened in a few nightmares but it’s not typical. I’ve never been hurt by the entity and I guess it’s safe to say I haven’t hurt it either. Yet we still feel obliged to duke it out.
The fact that I am never successful in ousting the paranormal entity, and I’ve never actually been defeated myself, leaves me pondering the eventual outcome if the nightmares continue. And while I’ve never once recalled saying to the beast "The power of Christ compels you," it’s pretty much that kind of thing I’m blasting forth in these mind waves, and it’s exactly what antagonizes my opponent most. We’re not arguing about housekeeping matters here, or who left the pizza box and crusts on the stairs. We’re determining which creature is the strongest, and there just isn’t a conclusion that makes me feel at all content. Yet I believe that in one of these nightmares, there will be something more conclusive...either I’m going to fob this spirit off to another dimension or it’s going to liquidate this intruder. Who knows? I’ll keep you posted on any new nightmares I’ve had the displeasure of experiencing.
When I talk to my wife about these dreams she doesn’t seem all that surprised. "Well, Ted, you sit here amidst thousands of books, scribbling notes till after midnight, read about ghosts, hauntings and murders and watch movies about the paranormal.....it is more likely an oddity why you don’t have ten times more nightmares than you do!" Suzanne is so sensible about these things. She’s right of course. But it’s what historians and writers do.....can’t see myself changing habits on the off-chance I can reduce my nightmares from attic attacks to triple bogey scenarios on the dreamland golf course....or something like that.
What I’m pretty sure of, is the unfinished nature of my research and the ongoing requirement to re-visit many more attics in old buildings, to square off against my rather nebulous, mystical but all powerful arch rival..... will require the "kicking of each other’s arses" for some years to come. Maybe I’ll sort it out eventually and confront the entity with something more effective than mind-waves. Maybe not. I guess it’s an occupational hazard of delving into the expansive, complicated, perilous dimension of the paranormal. Yet truth be known, I’d much rather live with the frequent nightmares than abandon this most fascinating research.
THE WRITER-ADMIRER AND THE SERENDIPITOUS, STRANGE AND ONGOING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE MYSTERY OF TOM THOMSON
There is a lot to appreciate about serendipity and the researcher/ historian and discovery. In the mind-science realm, much of what we consider to be messages from the spirit-kind, are potentially no more than accidental and coincidental occurrences carrying along a theme of interest. For example, it is known that many of the world’s great discoveries, from medical cures to the landmarks reached by the legends of exploration, had helpful, somewhat accidental, serendipitous interplay.....one discovery, influencing the founding or location of something else.....strangely related but an unexpected find at the time. In my own research work it is pretty much a constant, so much so that I look forward to each prevailing discovery to have great influence on my next most significant gain or enlightenment. I’m seldom disappointed.
When I first turned on to the mystery of Tom Thomson, an artist who helped inspire the future Group of Seven Canadian artists, it was only several weeks into the project.....as a reasonably seasoned historian and researcher, that coincidences started happening all over the place.....and the more I reached into the musty old files containing information on his alleged drowning death in Algonquin Park, during the summer of 1917, the more I became convinced this would be the one project that would be a work in progress for the rest of my life. That was in the mid 1990's, and now in about the 13th year, and many published articles later, I’m nowhere near what I feel is the point of completion. And while there were many, many gains made by serendipitous discovery, there was a nagging and altogether strange sensation that Thomson wanted something more from me.....to keep up the questioning in the public’s mind about his murder. From the first day of research it was clear that the theory of accidental drowning was ill-founded and should never have been allowed to stand. In my opinion, a murderer succeeded in proving that "dead men tell no tales." Until that is..... pesky researchers refuse to accept what history presents as fact and take what ever serendipity wishes to contribute.....to prove or disprove accepted thought. Following are formerly published columns written several years ago, regarding the Tom Thomson mystery, presented by "Curious: The Tourist Guide." It was singularly the most well-read and responded-to series of columns I’d ever written. They are not ghost stories as such but if it is possible for a spirit to reach from the beyond, I have no doubt Thomson’s memory was causing this itch.....and one discovery of inconsistency led to another, and it did become a story about an investigation that was corrupted from its commencement in 1917. Coming soon will be a full length feature on the good Mr. Thomson’s case circa 1917-2009.

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The Antique Store Shopper Who Really Wasn't
While it might seem from the plethora of gathered stories so far that our family eagerly embraces the paranormal to the point of invention, we're still not at the point where ghostly encounters have meant anything more than a slight deviation of life's normal course. I'm reasonably sure many people have had paranormal experiences throughout their lives but opted to avoid even the most basic analysis or cross referencing, in order to authenticate the activity. I'm of the firm belief many of these experiences are a long, long way from what might be considered intrusive and frightening. Most are pretty passive events and nothing more than everso delicate messages from those who have passed. We in our house tend to be more receptive and attentive to activities surrounding us on any given day. I don't sit around waiting for something paranormal to present itself but I don't run away scared if all of a sudden a smell of lilacs or a bell mysteriously ringing goes otherwise unexplained. And we don't blame everything on the paranormal and are quick to find any other source that could explain our sensory intrusion. Quite a few are accepted but largely unexplained but always welcome none the less.
I've had exposure to strange encounters most of my life, and Suzanne has had a few but none that were the fuel of public notoriety such as to facilitate the inking of a movie deal. If you have read many paranormal stories, and are familiar with ghostly encounters yourself, our stories are about as run-of-the-mill as you can get. Nothing particularly spectacular when compared to stories about haunted castles and spiritful misty moors. Ours are really what might be expected of interesting, somewhat hard to explain encounters.....none of them threatening although possibly a tad unsettling. What we do have is an open minded approach to new and interesting things in this crazy old life. We couldn't possibly rule out the existence of ghosts or Unidentified Flying Objects or for that matter goblins, fairies, trolls, and other assorted wee beasties writers have been telling us about for centuries......we just haven't worked to disprove their existence because frankly it doesn't bother us either way. If we found a fairy in our garden we wouldn't try to snatch it up as a trophy. We'd just be delighted our garden was good enough to provide habitat.
In every single encounter we have had individually or as a family, we have never been led in that particular direction by, as an example, having just watched a horror flick, or just prior to...., reading about a haunting, or anything else that would have made us anticipate something lurking in the shadows. The encounters have all been when, as they say, we would least expect anything out of the ordinary. There had not been any stimulus to invent paranormal discovery. It just happened out of the blue or the dark depending on the time of day. Each time we have had an experience we might label in the paranormal domain, or at least close, we always try to find reasons it might have been mind over matter. And we never suggest for a moment that what we have witnessed, or sensed, is clear fact the paranormal has been at work.....because as researchers recognize, it isn't that easy to bag a photo of a wayward, passing by, or lodging-in-your-house "spirit," for proof you've been touched by the paranormal. We don't as a rule hunt ghosts or try to get rid of any we do find. Live and let haunt I hear some folks say. As historians by profession however, we cross reference fact and very often find fiction lurking within, and we adore refuting long held historical claims by applying good research skills. We've ticked a few folks off in our ballywick who preferred the old and trusted histories of the region, very much disliking those historical activists who delve too deeply. Thusly, when we put forward our tales of the paranormal, they are just that.....tales, because we can not prove beyond doubt that what we encountered is the work of the spirit-kind. It would be daft to swear on the Bible that we have been intruded upon by Catherine the ghost child. We can suspect a haunting but we simply can't offer proof beyond doubt.
One such strange but unproven encounter, that developed twice (only one of us experienced the mystery shopper), occurred once again at our former antique shop in Bracebridge. On the first occasion it had been a busy afternoon with a lot of tourist traffic passing through the basement shop. It was a strange location in many ways. Our shop was situated in a modern storefront addition that had been built onto the front of a large Victorian house that had once been occupied by the local undertaker. You couldn't get into the house from the addition and the original building had been divided into apartments. The creaking and groaning of the modified building never stopped, and it was common several times a day to hear footsteps coming down the stairs only to find no one arriving in the shop. In the early years of the store our sales desk was in a larger second room to the left, a sharp turn at the bottom of the stairs, such that we couldn't see who was coming in until they rounded the corner into the main shop. If they went straight into the room at the bottom of the stairs, we might only hear the tinkling of china or pinging of crystal, as a shopper(s) tested the wares. Lots of times we would get up and actually go to the room to see if any one had actually belonged to the footfall. We just wrote it off to a settling building and the constant pounding of heavy traffic up the main street.
Late this particular afternoon, Suzanne looked up from bookwork at the counter to see an elderly bearded man in an old coat standing a few feet in front. She was about to say "hello" to the sudden guest of the shop, when the figure simply vanished into thin air. Yet she could describe his facial features and clothing, his height and expression as clearly as you would any customer who appears at your sales desk with an enquiry or a request to purchase. Several weeks later, in pretty much the same circumstance as the first encounter, Suzanne felt a presence near the counter, looked up to see if someone needed help, and saw the same gentleman standing in front as before. She thought at first that she had been too quick to judge the gentleman's visit the first time as a ghostly encounter, due to the fact he was obviously interested in something in our shop. As she pulled up from the chair to properly address the chap, still standing within a few metres of the counter, he simply turned and vanished as quietly and mysteriously as he had arrived. It did leave my wife rubbing her eyes wondering just how the lighting in the store was creating this illusion of a short bearded man in a frock. In retrospect what she did see was not a chap from the 1990's, but someone dressed characteristic of many decades previous. It had the usual trappings of "I've seen a ghost." Suzanne was looking for another sale for the day and instead got a twice disappearing customer on the cusp of something or other. She just didn't understand the message you might say.
There are many stories about the folks who used to dwell in this particular Victorian era house, one being that a sickly relative had lived and suffered from a long and serious ailment alone in the attic, over many years, eventually passing away in that same section of the old home. Once again as historians, we have not varified this claim by a former resident. Suzanne has no doubt about the man she saw but whether it was the deceased attic-dweller, we will probably never know. I never saw the chap in my days at the store but I did hear the phantom footsteps at least once every day for more than five years. Still, it was a good location for our shop and during its run we enjoyed a pretty good volume of sales. We gave it up to pursue new business opportunities in Gravenhurst, a town ten miles south of Bracebridge but we still have a soft spot for the Birch Hollow location of once.
Woodchester Villa's Storied Past - My Favorite of all Haunts
It was in the late summer of 1977, the year I graduated from York University, in Toronto, that I decided to get involved with a move in Bracebridge, Ontario, to save an historic octagonal home built by Woolen Mill founder, Henry Bird, closely following a design put forth by American Orsen Fowler.....who believed in the restorative, health-promoting, life-sensible qualities of living within an octagon. Many folks across North America did buy into his belief and designs for better living, and there were two such examples in Muskoka, one a lakeside cottage the other Woodchester Villa, or as it was better known to the local citizenry as..... the "Bird House," in reference to the founder of the hill-top estate.
I was part of the first board of directors of the newly established Bracebridge Historical Society, and I do consider myself the chap who put forth the idea to commence the group in the first place, which after a few years of hardy labor down the road, proudly opened the newly acquired museum (in the early 1980's). After a short hiatus due to out-of-the-area employment, I returned as a member of the Board a hair's breadth into the new museum's mandate, which was to both preserve local heritage and entertain visitors. I remained at Woodchester in one capacity or another for the better part of the decade, as both the Society's President and later Museum Manager during the period of the late 1980's.
I worked many long hours at the museum and each member of our family spent their summers, during that hectic decade, tied in one way or another to the site. We looked after a lot of the maintenance issues from mowing the lawns to painting the decking, weeding the limestone walkways to running educational and entertainment programs throughout the two summer months. There was a tight budget from the beginning of the museum to the time I ended my association. We had many Strawberry Socials on the lawns at Woodchester, and two sensational "Theatre in the Round" performances, thanks to the actors connected at the time to Muskoka Festival, then operating each summer from the Gravenhurst Opera House. They did the shows for free and it helped our attendance figures which were at the time failing for many different reasons. First of all, we had few if any dollars to spend on advertising. We got by each summer on the kindness of so many generous volunteers and folks who left donations to help us offset costs.
We guided many school tours through the years, and had special open houses at Christmas and then a "Christmas in July," program for kids during the summer season. We even had impromtu musical events offered by concert and otherwise accomplished pianists who would just happen by the parlor as part of the tour.....then be unable to resist tickling the ivories.....that's right....they would just start playing and a crowd would soon gather nearby. From this kind of unexpected but always welcome entertainment, we'd range upwards to hosting the full regalia, Provincial Salvation Army Band on the side lawn. We tried everything at least once, and it was particularly tough because we suffered most of the time from too few volunteers, too much work expected of us.... and we had two tiny tots to contend with at the same time. Now try to repeat that last line fast. Talk about a tongue twister but it's all true. It was a crazy time of our lives as a family and I dare say my wife was pondering the sensibility of marrying an historian. I can remember Suzanne having to hold son Robert while demonstrating butter-making for the "Christmas in July" event. In fact, I used to set up the playpen in the museum annex, for son Robert, and I let Andrew play with his toy cars on the museum floor in the restored former Presbyterian Church, while I worked from the back office. It was a daily thing. My boys grew up in a museum. It somewhat explains their interest in old stuff now, I suppose. (The former church site by the way, is now the Chapel Gallery.....of which I helped initiate to the site in the initial plan for the museum's business upgrade from poverty status to sustainability). We worked in every area of the museum and knew it incredibly well. I used to sneak folks up to the Widow's Walk, which was accessed through a trap door at the uppermost peak of the roof, where the view to the river and main street was magnificent. I wasn't supposed to do this but I did it any way! It was an insurance issue moreso. It was safe to my standard but not by their reasoning.
Woodchester Villa had its share of curious attributes. None that were particularly troubling but it was obvious to any paranormally sensitive occupant or visitor, there was an aura, an unseen energy within which gave you the constant feeling of being watched. We weren't the first to experience these sensations, as it was noted by other residents of the property from year's past, that it was a dwelling of many strange noises and curious unexplainable occurrences. While it wasn't enough to scare any one from the building there were occasions when we all would ask ourselves, "did you hear that," "who turned the light on," or "where are those barking dogs?" I seldom if ever walked up to the Widow's Walk without feeling someone was coming up right behind me. I'd even feel a tug on my ankle but nobody else was on the narrow staircase when I would look down. It was probably mind over matter in this case because it was kind of a spooky, dimly lit part of the house to traverse in all kinds of weather and times of day.
The first documented case of unusual sounds in the house, was reported by museum staff in about the second year of full operation. Several staff members told about being in the second floor curator's office, and hearing the sound of barking dogs. The windows were closed and there were no dogs barking when staff stepped out to investigate. I had heard them as well, so I didn't have any reason to doubt that they had also heard the nearly non-stop howling and barking as if the hounds were in the house itself. I never really thought about it until the young ladies on staff, started to look for these barking dogs. None could be found. If there was barking heard in the house, by taking one step out the door at the front or back, the racket would suddenly cease. At that time nobody mentioned the "barking dogs" as being any kind of paranormal encounter. It was just annoying. In the middle of book work I'd get up and stick my head out the window, like most on staff for those years, and yell "Shut up....shut up you stupid dogs!" It didn't work. The paranormal connection came a short while later, while students who should have been at work guiding, dusting and conserving, took a particular interest in the spiritual essences of the estate. They commenced an unanticipated, unwarranted and non-sanctioned exploratory adventure to determine just how many ghosts dwelled within the octagon of Woodchester Villa. I was in for a rude introduction to their handiwork when the electronic media showed up to record the hauntings which even included what turned out to be an invented murder scenario, the students believed had occurred on the estate. It was a public relations coup on one hand, because it did get us needed publicity but the Bird family was not impressed by the suggestion foul play had occurred on the upper staircase......as the spirits had somehow relayed to the teenage tour guides. It is said a guide was threatened on the staircase by some invisible entity, and told to get out of the house. It was pretty much what I told them but I wasn't a ghost....just a pissed off public relations director trying to mend fences as fast as they were smashing them down. It began as calmly as this......
It was the same year that I was working on behalf of the Public Relations Committee, that I had my first run-in with ghosts and those who wished to identify them as unique qualities and quantities of the Victorian estate. A reporter on staff of The Herald-Gazette, of which I was editor at the time, went to do a story about the alleged haunting of the Bird House. I didn't really think too much of it, until it arrived on my desk for approval.....and as content overseer, I had to weigh content and adverse impact before I passed it on to lay-out. It wasn't breaking news or anything and it seemed harmless for a page four insertion. What I assumed was to be a light feature article, and possibly a kindly bit of publicity for a new museum, had a much more dire story-line. It seemed that in response to the annoying and ongoing din of barking dogs, which lasted a few years on and off, the staff decided this time to allow Ouiji to sort it all out. One young lady brought the board in to see if the staff could make contact with the spirits, still holed-up somewhat comfortably in the century old octagonal house. Well, one thing led to another, and all sorts of weird stuff was being reported, and what was to be a one-time feature story for the fun of it, became a lengthier series of articles......because the reporter's initial interest generated more delving, questions to the "other side," and a playfulness with the television reporter who picked up the feature story and decided to approach staff directly. It was a slow news period...you're right!
As a short sidebar to this story, I let an acquaintance of mine, during casual after-work conversation, in on the most recent debacle happening at Woodchester.....she was a highly sensitive young lady with a particular awareness about paranormal characteristics and habits, and who knew all about seances, and the inherent dangers of a Ouiji Board in the wrong hands. She scolded me soundly for allowing the girls to play around with the Board, and taking a chance that every wayward spirit, good and nasty, would feel warmly at home in these new (old) digs. I happened to mention it to her just as plain old, run-of-the-mill conversation, regarding the kind of day I was having as both a museum director and editor...... being weighed down by the chores of the day. To her it was a far more serious matter....unearthly you might say. "By using that Board you've invited a lot more spirits than were probably ever lodging in that house, to come for an extended visit, and never, never want to leave," she said with unflinching confidence that we'd made a giant welcome sign to "party-on dudes." We didn't really want a sideshow up there afterall. This female friend, who shall remain nameless, told me that one of the great faults of using such a board, is that you can inadvertently invite any old wayward spirit into the mainstream without having a chance to check credentials at the door. "You can draw in a lot of spirits you don't want in your house.....and this is their portal back into our world!" I just nodded because that's the first I'd ever heard of that particular conduit between this world and the great beyond. I don't know whether she was right or not.....but life and haunting did get somewhat more involved after the board was used....moreso than just the sound of barking dogs.
I was watching the nightly news, sipping a nice cold beer, when all of a sudden a film clip appeared on-screen of Woodchester, with a story about an unsolved mystery unfolding in Bracebridge......and it may have involved murder. What staff had been up to went way beyond the Ouiji Board and the feature story we ran in The Herald-Gazette. Now staff was investigating an unresolved murder in the house and an empty grave in the local cemetery. Geez, they were hired to work as museum interpreters and now it was turning into an episode of "Murder She Wrote." What was worse is that they started naming names, and it involved a prominent family......the first family of the house in fact, and to hear about it on the nightly news didn't amuse any of the kin who caught the reference. The story was that a young family member had been pushed down a flight of stairs, probably coming from the attic, and had been killed by the fall. It was assumed the burial plot held the secret and short of digging it up, a lot of inuendo had been cast unceremoniously around town. Just the kind of slanderous stuff that can get a museum and staff into serious legal trouble, and give a public relations director some wickedly strong heartburn. I was on the phone mending fences right away. I was having lots of meetings with lots of people, and my reporter was called in to re-assess what he had helped fan into the nightly news.
We found out that it had begun when one of the staff members reported that he had been audibly told to "get out of this house,"
by some unseen entity, as he was descending the attic to third floor staircase. A little unsettled and building on a theme already stemming up from a strong root of suspicion, the next ill conceived project was to find out if the voice and a grave marker discrepency someone else had found, added up to murder-most-foul. The bottom line here, is that there was no murder, no foul play whatsoever, and we had many apologies to bestow to family .....and a Ouiji Board to remove from the house.
It took a few years for this to blow over. It doesn't mean the house wasn't paranorally endowed, and it may have even been quite honestly interpreted that an entity within wanted the subject staff member to "buzz off," but there was no murder. No mystery. Just the life history of an old house fussing up from time to time....creaking timbers and settling ground and yes a few quality moments of barking dogs from somewhere quite unknown.
One of the most significant paranormal events came when a director of the museum, a guy who wouldn't budge for any wayward spirit, got the idea to tape-record old 78 rpm records from the parlor gramaphone so that we could play them through the day by using a speaker insert in the cabinet; the recorder actually placed in an unused bathroom nearby. So instead of wearing out the needles on the gramaphone, or stressing the critical main-spring with daily use, it afforded us a great option to bring music into the parlor by what appeared to be a whirling Victrola but was actually an extension of electronics. Guests believed it was an actual record being played and seemed to enjoy the ambience it created in the otherwise stuffy parlor.
What happened was that while the records were being recorded, some curious knocking and other noises in the house were being picked up. When he played us the tape we could clearly hear the knocking as if someone was at the adjacent door....that's how clear it was recorded. Yet he had no actual interruptions throughout the recording session over several days. He often went out of the room, even out doors while the record was spinning and despite his best efforts to identify the sources of the knocking (he heard later on the recordings), he could offer no explanation for their existence. The records themselves were fine as was the machine. He listened to all the records over again and never heard problems with the actual pressing, that would have accounted for the knocking. He firmly believed the sounds to have been external and not a technical problem with either the tape recorder or Victrola. I used to play that same tape over and over during at least three years, and I always got a kick out of hearing the knocks myself. They weren't really disturbing or unsettling but it did seem to be the case something was trying to get attention on that particular day of recording.
On another occasion I intruded quite accidentally on a conversation of a young family coming down from the second floor of the museum, in a rather animated discussion about "The Room," and "Did you get that feeling we shouldn't step inside?" I asked the guide what room the family had felt uncomfortable in, and she pointed me to the children's quarters at the right of the stairs. I wandered in and looked all about, studied the period toys strewn on the floor, as if children had just been at play, and dismissed anything paranormal whatsoever. I chatted at some length with the guides who told me that many visitors to the second floor would not go into the room, despite the fact we had taken down barrier ropes during my tenure as director manager. "They find it occupied," said one of the guides. "They enjoy looking at the master bedroom and the other exhibits in the bedroom at the front of the house but they don't like going into the children's room." We decided to do a little survey. Without telling any one about our interest in the room, and why it seemed oppressive, we jotted down remarks from people leaving the museum and asked them specifically which rooms they enjoyed the most....and the least.
We of course found that a majority of visitors that summer did not like the child's room. They said it appeared "sad and lonely," the toys being unplayed with. It was my wife's own refusal to enter the room that made me ever-more interested in finding out what it was that inspired these feelings of forboding. We tried to change-up the toy display, putting some away and tidying up the floor space to allow visitors full entrance to the room. Suzanne still felt the room was occupied and suggested it had nothing at all to do with the decor. She felt there was a strong presence of a child in the room and there was no compassion to share the toys. I have stood for hours in that room on bright days, where light was brimming into the room, and on dull days when rain splashed against the glass pane.....and never, not even for a second, did I feel unwelcome in those quarters. It doesn't mean everyone else was wrong because by averages of people avoiding it, I was the one being paranormally numb-founded you might say.
My most significant paranormal experience in that house came on the day of an open house during a Christmas in July program. Both Suzanne and I were feeling poorly that day the result of the flu, or an illness from something we had consumed, and we were painfully putting together the day's materials in order that the event could run as planned. Suzanne was setting out a massive cake in the upstair's porch area, while looking after both Andrew and Robert. Staff were setting up chairs for the band yet to arrive, and I was in the downstairs kitchen making up lemonade for the several hundred guests expected. In the basement area you could hear footsteps above but not clearly. You certainly couldn't hear anything outside because the thick stone walls insulated out the noise of the neighborhood. As for the barking dogs, you could only hear them in the upstair bedroom we used in those days as the office. In the abutting open area to the kitchen we held our regular board meetings. I was stirring the lemonade when all of a sudden I could hear a child in near hysterics, crying loudly enough to be in the adjoining Victorian-era kitchen part of the original home layout. I went running over to see if a youngster had snuck downstairs and hurt themselves by some misadventure. There was nothing. Yet I could still hear the crying. I looked out the basement door and there wasn't a sound or person visible. Back through the door it was clear again. Then I felt a cold shiver when I thought of Suzanne and the boys in the porch area upstairs. Thinking maybe one of the boys had been stung by a bee, I raced up the narrow stairs, jogged through the parlor, the hall, jostling a few volunteer helpers along the way, only to find Suzanne with Andrew on a chair, Robert asleep in his stroller, and their mother cutting the cake into several hundred squares.
"Who was crying," I asked an obviously startled wife. "What are you talking about....no one has been crying....though I feel like it," she retorted. "Where did you hear crying?" she asked. "Downstairs. I was stirring the lemonade and heard a kid crying.....I thought it was coming from the next room but it wasn't." "Outside?" she asked. "No, I went out the back door half expecting to find someone with a skinned knee but there was nothing." There had been no crying child that we could find on the premises indoors or out. But I heard crying regardless. My imagination? Even when I was moving around in that kitchen, and heading from room to room, I could hear the crying. It only stopped when I put my head out the bottom door. Once inside again I could hear the same crying. When I hit the top of the stairs to the first floor, it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. This was the first serious encounter I had experienced at Woodchester. It was a little unsettling. I thought then about the child's room on the second floor, and wondered to myself whether there was indeed an unhappy child left in that house from another era.
There were many other smaller incidents of curious nature that I encountered during my tenure as museum director and then manager but nothing that would have ever scared me from my task or spending hours working on projects within. I did feel there was someone watching from that house, especially when we were working outside. While raking the leaves or grass clippings I'd often get the feeling someone was watching out over the garden, and when I'd sneak a peak back toward the upper level of the house, I'd find everything as it should have been. No wavering curtains. No mysterious face looking out. Yet it was the one constant feeling working around the property, and even inside there seemed to be a guardian of the site, possibly the spiritual aura Fowler believed would have a place in an octagonal building. I never felt bad-will at Woodchester, and I was never told by any entity to "get out our else!" I think somehow the spirit of the dwelling knew we were kindly folks, looking after its earthly haunt, and cut us a little slack. It's possible it just didn't like some visitors and made them feel unwelcome in certain areas of the house.
I adored my years working at Woodchester Villa but after more than ten years involved with the project, and having a badly neglected young family, it was time to turn over the responsibilities to another curator and guiding volunteers. All us Curries still have a soft spot when it comes to remembering time spent at Woodchester Villa and Museum. It was an important part of our lives for many years and we will never forget its strange but welcoming aura. Make it a point sometime soon to visit this charming old hillside estate! Judge for yourself whether there are resident spirits, or not!